The needs of the business

November 28, 2013

I love Black Friday shopping. I love the lines, the Christmas music, the rush I get as the cashier swipes my credit card (no, I don't need a support group), buying things for myself when I should be buying gifts for other people, and most of all the satisfaction that all this walking is working off the three helpings of desserts I had the night before.

I love getting up in the wee hours to hunt out bargains. Or at least I used to. I am really not sure how Black Friday evolved into Black Thursday, but I wont be participating. I can't in good conscience shop on Thanksgiving, when I know I am ruining a retail employee's holiday with their family.

How do I know that? Because I am someone who worked retail for seven miserable years. It is something that I pray almost daily that I will never have to repeat. When people start posting the 30 days of thanks on Facebook the first thing that comes to my mind is how thankful I am to not be working retail and therefore dreading the entire holiday season.

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As a retail employee, I never looked forward to Easter, Labor Day, Columbus Day or the Fourth of July, and I absolutely detested Memorial Day. The days leading up to the holiday sucked. The actual holiday sucked. The phrase "it's for the needs of the business" will forever be engraved on my brain and if I hear them, it may just cause me to go hide under my bed and cry.

Sound overdramatic? Too bad. The only two holidays that you didn't have to sell your soul to avoid working were Thanksgiving and Christmas. The only two holidays where you knew you could actually eat dinner with your family instead of showing up to eat leftovers because you were working were Thanksgiving and Christmas. The only two holidays where celebrating, having a family, and enjoying yourself weren't something that had to get squeezed in around "the needs of the business" were Thanksgiving and Christmas.

And guess what: the two have become one. One precious holiday left. At least this year. Until "the needs of the business" demand that Christmas be a day the store is open as well so that people can exchange all the crap that was purchased on Thanksgiving for new crap.

Yes, I am fully aware that many people work holidays such as nurses (like my mother), police officers (like my cousin), and thousands of others. My argument here is that having your big box retail store open on Thanksgiving is not a necessity. It is less than a necessity. I would argue it is just plain cruel.

And please don't argue that "some employees" actually want to work on the holiday. Maybe "some employees" do. However, it is definitely not representative of the majority.

News flash! Black Friday has been a success for decades. If stores didn't open until Black Friday people would still be there to spend money and swipe those credit cards. And most importantly, the employees who have to work on Thanksgiving would have gotten an actual holiday instead of squeezing in their lives for the "needs of the business."

I guess getting your money a few hours earlier is worth cheating families out of Thanksgiving. And I guess returning all of that crap on Christmas will eventually be worth cheating people out of that holiday as well.